Understanding Referential Integrity

An important topic to consider and test for as part of the conversion effort is referential integrity. You can convert a lot of data into the correct tables, but the overall system may not have the necessary connections. If you use the normal posting processes in the various applications to convert most of the legacy data, you should not have referential integrity problems because those processes contain many of the necessary referential integrity rules.

An example in Student Financials is third-party contract information. If you link a third party or a transaction to a contract, the contract needs to exist. However, if the conversion neglects to convert contracts, then a referential integrity problem can occur.